Tiffany Treviño
UTRGV Mechanical Engineering student Tiffany Treviño, completed her second UTCRS REU experience at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln. During her 2015 UTCRS REU experience, she narrowed her research interests to the evaluation of the dynamic reactions on mechanical parts and components using finite element methods. Thus, she decided to use her 2016 UTCRS REU experience to address an increasingly alarming issue in the railroad industry: the transportation of fuel and hazardous chemicals. The rise in the usage of rail tank cars and the catastrophic consequences observed in derailments involving them, have resulted in the need to redesign these tank cars to prevent them from easily being punctured in an impact during a derailment. Using finite element analysis she examined a side impact on the shell of a rail tank car, simulating a derailment event. She created the geometry and executed the finite element analysis using the commercial software packages Hypermesh and LS-PrePost. Ms. Treviño found that the addition of an aluminum honeycomb energy absorber considerably improved the rail car tank’s puncture resistance, by allowing the absorption of energy to be split between the steel shell and the honeycomb structure. Her findings can provide the railroad industry with an alternative to enhance the safety in the transportation of fuel and hazardous chemicals.